"Dissent Essential To Mankind’s Future”

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32392, 3 September 1970, Page 10

"Dissent Essential To Mankind’s Future”

The maintenance of free, effective and proper dissent was essential to the future of mankind, the Ombudsman (Sir Guy Powles) said in a sermon in Christchurch Cathedral yesterday during a service to mark the opening of the National Council of Churches annual meeting.

“Mankind without dissent, lapsing into blind rigid conformity or apathy has no future," he said. “This inspired individuality is what creates the phenomenon of man. Without it, man could become an unsuccessful biological experiment, and go the way of other species.” Sir Guy Powles who is the New Zealand representative on the Commission of the Churches on International Af-

fairs, said that he did not know whether there was now such a thing as a national philosophy, or faith, or culture—any corpus of ideal to which persons had a loyalty. “In the last century, certainly, the family, the church the schools, the universities, all combined to instil or inspire in us a certain body of common belief, of decent feeling of manners, even of duty which gave cohesion and, under the monarchy, even unity to our nation,” he said.

Church Influence

“Now these institutions have largely lost their influence. The religious ethic has partly disappeared and no other ethic has taken its place to tie us together. The cohesion has diminished; the unity is gone. Sir Guy Powles said that what was needed, therefore, was a consensus of dissent

“Because we have neglected the quality of our political life, especially our liberties and our democratic institutions such as Parliament, we must not be surprised at the tendency of people to take to the streets, the squares, and to the nation’s forums other than Parliament at times of crisis and contention." “Ivory Towers” “The worst thing we can do is to retire into our own private ivory towers, or to sit quietly on the tops of our private stone pillars, and totally remove ourselves from the more difficult problems of everyday life. “Let us never be afraid to be different,” he said. “The gardens of the world are all different; it is only the deserts that are the same.

“But, if we differ, let It be in a garden, surrounded by the sights, scents, and delights of human harmony,” said Sir Guy Powles.